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voucher also functioned as an incentive to motivate progress and development in schools, as it stipulated the financial underpinning of the organisation. This meant that there was a continuous need to attract students to stay afloat, since the number of students (that is, vouchers) provided the economic basis of the school. Swedish scholars have analysed the impact of this competitive environment and the strategies deployed to attract students. Among other things, they have shown the variation of strategies that schools owned by different stakeholders use (Lundahl et al, 2014). The strategies used by schools to attract pupils is also shown to be dependent upon the perceived hierarchy of schools (Palme, 2008; Forsberg, 2015). While prestigious schools can attract students with minor efforts and a low-key profile, others have relied more profoundly on marketing and gifts (Lund, 2007). The latter is often visible at promotional events such as school fairs and open houses (Harling, 2017).
The particularity of Stockholm’s expanding educational market is connected to the political and public support for pro-choice policies. Another reason is the increasing number of inhabitants. An equally important factor has been the emergence of a regional educational market between 2008 and 2011. The regional educational market consists of a collaboration between 28 different municipalities (Storsthlm, 2019). It includes all post-16 schools and produces competition at the regional level. However, competition existed before 2008. The difference resides in the size, sprawl, form and regulations of the educational market. The first generation of independent schools included ideas-driven schools with specific pedagogic visions and, furthermore, old private schools. These schools were predominantly placed in affluent areas and metropolitan regions. While the proximity zones of public schools were not fully eradicated until 2011, from 1992 young people could attend any independent school in the region. This led to an uneven competition and an advantage for many independent schools. As a consequence, independent schools continued to expand – often in profitable geographical areas.
When the regional educational market was introduced in 2008, regulation changed, and thus some public schools attracted an increasing number of students. Continuous changes in 2011 expanded the opportunities for school choice further. This means that young people are able to apply to any school in the Stockholm region and compete for a position based on grades. That is to say, higher grades equal more options and a greater probability to attend prestigious schools. The regional collaboration has fostered increasing possibilities for geographical mobility among young people. However, as research has suggested, social and educational differences persist (Söderström and Uusitalo, 2005; Forsberg, 2015). From this perspective, it becomes interesting to discuss the current state of schools in Stockholm, particularly, the phenomenon of inner-city schools.
Inner-city schools: a short introduction
Whereas the term ‘inner-city school’ typically insinuates something unfavourable, the opposite can be said for Stockholm and other major Swedish cities. This has, among other things, become obvious in the increasing number of post-16 schools situated in inner-city areas and the students attending these schools. Of the large number of post-16 schools in Stockholm, 59 are located within the inner-city area. This number has increased from 16 in the early 1990s. The same goes for students attending post-16 inner-city schools, which more than doubled between 1997 and 2017. Although many students still attend school close to home, this trend follows the general pattern of increasing geographical mobility among students in larger urban regions (The Swedish National Agency of Education, 2019). As Butler and Hamnett noted in 2007, ‘neighbourhood social solidarity’ has been ‘important’ in the Swedish context, however, ‘this is changing’ (p.1167). Nevertheless, as we will illustrate in this chapter, not all post-16 inner-city schools are equally prestigious. In fact, many rely on the profits of being located within wealthier areas to attract students. This ought to be contrasted with the post-16 inner-city elite schools, which rely on additional characteristics than just the geographical placement.
Theory: for a relational understanding of educational marketisations
Theoretically, our research takes inspiration from the scholarship of Pierre Bourdieu and successors. It includes concepts such as strategies, recognition and capitals (assets4) (Bourdieu, 1996). Analytically these concepts provide a relational foundation for understanding social phenomena. In our case, this relates to the hierarchical struggles of positions and positioning in the socially and symbolically uneven geography of Stockholm. The concepts of strategies, recognition and symbolic capital are useful to understand the notion of ‘profits of localization’ (Bourdieu, 1999) and how the inner-city schools are to be understood. But they also provide an analytical point of departure when analysing students’ perceptions.
In this chapter we have also been inspired by contemporary Bourdieusian scholars such as Mike Savage and colleagues in particular, and their work that concerns ‘emerging cultural capital’ and the city (see Prieur and Savage, 2013; Savage et al, 2018). That is to say, how the transformation and continuous gentrification of certain urban areas has made some cities areas of emerging cultural capital and with a certain cosmopolitan position. This could be seen in the awareness of urban aesthetics, but also in the social dynamics of gentrified cities such as transnational investment and segregation. As discussed before, there is a need to link the geographies of education to socio-political processes. When the city transforms, so do the possibilities to arrange education. This is particularly the case when dominant groups such as middle-class, upper middle-class and upper-class families are affected by these transformations and decide to move on to other places (Gamsu, 2015). But also, it change the possibilities for schools and students who stay behind and struggle with fewer resources and harder conditions (Bunar, 2009).
Research methods
This chapter draws from data collected in different stages between 2012 and 2019. It is predominantly based on a one-year ethnography in three post-16 elite schools. This combines interviews with 119 agents, such as students, teachers, principals and other staff members with observations in classrooms, meetings, hallways, open houses and several other events and locations. Furthermore, the data include secondary statistics, marketing pamphlets, school documents, year books, school papers and different artefacts. We have also complemented the dataset with a broader spectrum of school webpages, marketing pamphlets, photos,5 24 interviews with students from 2012 to 2013 and secondary statistics to illustrate the expanding sector of post-16 schools in Stockholm.
The ambition has been to gather an extensive dataset, to be able to map, analyse and understand the different segments of the post-16 inner-city schools. However, we are especially interested in the elite segment. This means that we have mainly focused on understanding the intersection of students’ educational strategies and schools’ institutional strategies. For us, it means a focus on recognition, positional struggles and variations in symbolic assets. Consequently, this work illuminates how the hierarchies of geography within Stockholm affects the inner-city schools and the regional educational market. We also explore the hierarchical differences between a small number of recognised ‘inner-city schools’ and the larger number of schools located in the